Campbell County Community News

According to a recent report from the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division, sales and use tax collections in fiscal year 2018 were up 15.3%, while lodging tax revenue went up 13.6%.

The report is produced annually and contains sales and use tax collection information categorized by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) super sector. Total sales and use tax collections reached $910.7 million across the state. The year over year growth rate for the state-imposed 4% tax collections was 17.1 percent, in contrast to a decline of 8.2 percent in the previous year.

“Because of two consecutive declines in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, the amount of total sales and use taxes for fiscal year 2018 was still 15.0 percent lower than that of fiscal year 2015, before the economic downturn in the state,” said Dr. Wenlin Liu, Chief Economist with the Economic Analysis Division.

As supply and demand rebalance, both oil and natural gas prices, particularly oil prices, have rebounded considerably since early 2016. Consequently, activities in mineral exploration gradually picked up, as evidenced by the increase of active drilling rigs in the state from twenty in early 2017 to nearly thirty in 2018.

“Around 20% of collections are from the mining industry, therefore the changes in total sales and use tax collections in Wyoming have been greatly affected by the dramatic swing in mineral activities,” Liu commented.

Campbell County showed a boost of 19.9%, with over 20 million dollars more collected than in 2017. The strong sales tax expansion was mainly driven by increased oil and/or natural gas drilling activities.